(MOBILE, Ala.) About two weeks ago, Ursula Dixon's husband walked outside their house and found something on her car.
"He said baby, you have a ticket," Dixon tells us. "So I read it. It said, you were parked blocking the sidewalk."
Her SUV--parked in her own driveway-- was hit with a $50 ticket because her bumper was hanging over the sidewalk. Dixon says she had no idea it wasn't allowed, and never received so much as a knock at the door asking her to move.
"I said, well I'm going to drive around the neighborhood and see how many more people are parked like this," she says. "I found seven."
We did the same, and also found several residents blocking the sidewalk. None of the neighbors we spoke with had ever received a ticket.
Dixon says between herself, her husband and two children who can each drive, they don't have much of a choice about where they park. Mobile Police Captain Jack Dove says the legal solution is for the cars that don't fit to park against the curb.
"We can park on the street," Dixon says, "but we don't want to because if someone drives by and hits us we would never know."
In the end Dixon says she paid the ticket to get it over with, but she still thinks it's unfair. She wants to make sure other neighbors don't make the same $50 mistake.
"I was just shocked that I got that ticket," she says.
Captain Dove says his officer responded to the neighborhood after the department received a complaint. He says several other residents were also ticketed that same day.
